TEXT [Commentary]

3.   The Divine Warrior (5:13-15)

13 When Joshua was near the town of Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with sword in hand. Joshua went up to him and demanded, “Are you friend or foe?”

14 “Neither one,” he replied. “I am the commander of the LORD’s army.”

At this, Joshua fell with his face to the ground in reverence. “I am at your command,” Joshua said. “What do you want your servant to do?”

15 The commander of the LORD’s army replied, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did as he was told.

NOTES

5:13 near the town of Jericho. Joshua was scouting the lay of the land and the defenses of Jericho, following up on the report of the two young men he had sent into the city (ch 2). Joshua’s personal courage is shown by his approach to the unknown figure, who was standing with his sword already drawn.

5:14 fell . . . in reverence. Though this verb often is used of worshipers prostrating themselves before God, prostration was customary also in the presence of humans who occupied a clearly superior social position. It is not necessarily proof Joshua regarded this unknown one as God.

5:15 Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy. Yahweh said nearly the same thing to Moses when he revealed himself to him in the burning bush (Exod 3:5). This seems to imply (though it is not absolute proof) that the unknown hero confronting Joshua was God.

COMMENTARY [Text]

The first five chapters of Joshua lead up to the siege of Jericho, Israel’s first engagement with the Canaanites. These chapters are framed at the beginning by God’s encounter with Joshua in a strong, lengthy speech of encouragement, and here at the end by a short encounter with the “commander of the LORD’s army.” This, too, was for Joshua’s encouragement, on the eve of real action against the enemy. This was the person who would give Joshua his instructions about the conduct of the siege of Jericho, instructions recorded in 6:2-5. Thus, 5:13-15 serves a twofold function. Not only is this paragraph the end piece of the frame for the narrative of the first five chapters, it also introduces the siege and conquest of Jericho that follows.

Joshua challenged the unknown figure with the question “Are you friend or foe?” but the response was not a direct answer. The stranger did not indicate support for either side; rather, his response showed Joshua that he had not yet grasped the significance of this one’s appearance to him. The issue was not whether this one would fight on Israel’s or on Jericho’s side. The real question was which of those two peoples would fight on Yahweh’s side. To bring that central question into focus, this one went on to identify himself. We may translate 5:14 a little more literally, “No [or, “Neither”], for I am the commander of Yahweh’s army; now I have come.” Once Joshua understood, this statement was a tremendous encouragement to him.

To put the matter in biblical terms, we do not ask God to be on our side. Rather, we declare our commitment to God’s side and make ourselves available to God’s service, wholeheartedly, without reservation. This is what Joshua did when he realized who stood before him; he “fell with his face to the ground in reverence” (5:14). This we too will do, if our commitment to God is as it should be. At its heart, this is what holiness, or sanctification, is all about.

Scenes such as these in the Old Testament are called “theophanies,” appearances of God to human beings, often in human form. Debate continues whether God himself or perhaps the preincarnate Christ appeared in human form, or whether these personages were angels, in which case they are not in fact instances of theophany after all. In considering Joshua’s encounter, this one’s self-reference, “commander,” could imply he was an angel. However, he did not prevent Joshua from prostrating himself, as angels did in later accounts (Dan 8:18; Rev 19:10).

One could argue that the command, “Take off your sandals, for the place . . . is holy,” proves this was God, because this is what God told Moses when he encountered God at the burning bush (Exod 3:5). That may be evidence, but it is not quite proof. However, we may infer that Joshua recognized the similarity of his present situation with Moses’s earlier one, and the author of Joshua intended the reader to recognize it, also. That would have been a final encouragement to Joshua on the eve of Israel’s first action against Canaan. Just as God had appeared to Moses to commission him to liberate Israel from Egypt’s pharaoh, now God, or God’s commander, appeared to Joshua to commission him to engage the armies of Canaan and bring Israel into their promised inheritance. We may ask, with Woudstra (1981:106), “What more [was] there to know before the Conquest [began] in earnest?”